Asynchronous communication and asymmetric information

Although no form of communication between humans can ever be fully synchronous, certain avenues of message delivery and of message reception are more effective than others in ensuring that meanings are conveyed as they are intended by the sender.

In economic theory, asymmetric information is understood to impact the choices that individuals make. We make decisions based on information we receive or already have. A sender of information, via email, telephone, text, film, radio, television, news, social media outlets, static advertising, meetings, or casual conversation, can intentionally and/or unintentionally, omit information that would otherwise change the outcome of another person's response or subsequent action.

Texting via IM, What'sApp, or mobile phone can come close to being considered synchronous communication if the communication is happening in 'real time.'  To what degree, however, is 'real time' synchronous or not? What kind of communication between people is the MOST synchronous?

Your Brazilian Resume

Here is a blog offering some advice on writing your resume for the Brazilian market.
Feel free to share other sites for resume writing from other countries.

Apple Watch Changing Marcom Trends

The folks at Next Level Marketing Communications have posited that Apple Watches may actually change the way you market services. They cite SEO analyst, Dan Cristo, who has suggested that the price of Apple Watch will catalyze the following:

1. Apps – Marketers will need to figure out how to not only market their iPhone and Android apps, but how to get users to download their smartwatch apps as well.
2. Payments – Retailers that have not yet upgraded their payment systems to accept NFC payments will want to get ready for a surge of young customers eager ditch their credit cards in favor of arm-waving checkouts.
3. Social Media – Apple’s target consumers for the Apple Watch are also the biggest consumers of social media content on the planet.
4. Geofencing/iBeacons – Marketers who live on the cutting edge will be pleased to learn Apple Watch app developers have the ability to create invisible geofences that sense when an Apple Watch user is in close proximity.
5. Healthy Lifestyles – Almost any company can get behind the social cause of healthy living.

What do you think!?

Workplace Communication through Workplace Behavior

Forbes

How we act in the workplace reflects one's capacity for time management, prioritizing tasks, efficiency, and self-awareness and self-care. All of these serve to make one a more effective manager or leader or business partner/colleague. Blogger Grant Assad pointed to a support video on Fast Company that dealt with Presentation Skills. Another Fast Company video addresses one's ability to use free time well. I think I break most of the "rules." Any of you physical fitness types want to take on a customer? 

Writing letters to "outer space"!

Business communication takes many forms. Consider writing a letter and sending it off the planet!
Here is a copy of an e-mail sent today by White House Director of Science and Technology Policy, Dr. John Holden:

Photo: NASA

Hi, everyone --

In January, President Obama wished NASA astronaut Scott Kelly good luck as Commander Kelly prepared to leave the Earth in March on the first one-year mission on the International Space Station (ISS).

Now, it's your turn: Commander Kelly is nearing the halfway point of this historic mission. Kelly and his one-year crewmate, Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko, will spend 342 total days in space. Send your well-wishes here -- and we'll work with NASA to deliver the message.

Here's why this is such a big deal:

Most expeditions on the ISS last four to six months. By embarking on a longer journey, Kelly and Kornienko are providing researchers an unprecedented opportunity to better understand how the human body reacts and adapts to long-duration spaceflight.

Scott's identical twin, retired NASA astronaut Mark Kelly, is also participating in a series of comparative studies here on Earth. This knowledge is critical as NASA looks toward human journeys deeper into the solar system -- including to and from Mars-that could last 500 days or longer. Researchers may also be able to apply this knowledge to help humans who stay here on Earth, from helping patients recover from long periods of bed rest to improving monitoring for people whose bodies are unable to fight infections.

Send your best wishes to Scott and Mikhail for their next six months in space, and join us in supporting this journey 250 miles above the Earth to inspire and benefit those who remain on it!

We'll be in touch with updates --

John

Dr. John P. Holdren
Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy
The White House
@whitehouseostp

Social Media in Action

We all hear about social media and its uses in business, but do you know some of the concrete commercial uses of these tools? Check out this BLOG by Savannah Collins that describes 10 top brands using a few social media tools to their advantage. (image from SMI)

Litigation and gag orders

Sometimes when businesses want to keep information from getting to the public, they will issue a gag order as part of a litigation decision. Read the attached article and decide how this media may impact the company's decision--both short and long term.

Children given lifelong gag order

Formal Resignation Letter

Optional vehicle for transmitting your resignation!

Old messages never die

For better or worse, what one says to the media is no longer safe in the archives of library basements. The Internet is the world's archive. Today, I was looking for an old program online from a presentation I gave in Guilin, China about 8 years ago. Instead, I found a citation I'd given to a magazine editor years ago. It seems that parts of that article has been cut and pasted so many times that it it barely recognized for its original source. See if you can figure out where the material actually got its start! I found pieces of the original HERE.

Research interview techniques

Madelon Eelderink is a researcher from the Netherlands who also works in the African continent, particularly in Uganda. Here is an informal "lecture" on research interviews:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64LfzIUNpLs

Worst cover letters ever?

As I read some of these letters, I find myself empathizing with a few of the writers. They mean well. Perhaps they are really beaten down in their jobs. Unfortunately, their correspondence reveals a bit too much!

Read this "Bottom 10" list from Business Insider.

Classroom communication

Communication and teaching share commonalities. Some would argue that both, done effectively, accomplish the intended consequences: comprehension and learning. But how do we talk about "doing communication" well? How is teaching done "well"? And what are the expected or intended outcomes related to "well-ness?" Neither communication nor teaching can happen without a minimum two people. Encoding and decoding require two people, at least. Self-teaching is certainly possible, but I would argue that self-learning is the better description of that particular process. Learning requires active interest and motivation. Teachers, or facilitators, therefore can and often do provide the impetus or motivation for others to learn. A great deal is written among psychologists and sociologists as well as by management behavioralists about self-efficacy. If you are unfamiliar with the term, here is an easy entry point.

Liar Liar

Study body language and speech to determine who's telling the truth.

Samsung Social-based Advertising

Here's a nice story that shows advertising can be win-win for consumers, shareholders, stakeholders and corporations, while making the world a better place too.

http://www.boredpanda.com/town-learns-sign-language-deaf-muharrem-samsung-video-call-center/

4-hour delivery "appointments"

Logistics-slomistics...what is the nonsense about?

What sort of well-run business needs a 4-hour window for home delivery? And where is the financial gain in disruptive service? I don't get it....

Enjoy this spoof from College Humor about UPS.

Walmart and the Koreans

Textbook cases present Walmart's unsuccessful international foray into Korea in a way that might actually be embarrassing for Walmart--if they themselves actually knew or admitted what their challenges truly were. The US perspective on the failure (amounting to some 800 million USD), is attributed by college textbook authors Mary Ellen Guffey and Dana Loewy (2014) to "cultural differences and fierce local competition" (p. 81).

But what were these "cultural differences" really? Take a look at this blog and one history student's perspective on what ailed Walmart in Korea.

Guffey, M.E. and Loewy, D. (2014) - Business Communication Process and Product - Mason, OH - SouthWestern 8th Edition.

Technology Trending

Dr. Hossein Eslambolchi, CEO of CyberFlow Analytics and a blogger on LinkedIn, has made some technology predictions that he (and probably others) feels will impact communications in significant ways. Here is his top 10 trend list:
Top 10 Technology Trends
1. IP networks must be ready for sextuple play, including sensory, gaming and IOT based devices.
2. Security requirements must move from a reactive, defensive 3P model (Proactive, Predictive, Preventative) onto the offensive – otherwise there will be problems of biblical proportions.
3. All future IP services will be designed for three screens – mobile, TV and PC.
4. Wireless internet access will be big – driving better modes of mobility with Wi-Fi and 4G+/5G, achieving explosive growth.
5. Sensor networks will proliferate – machine IP addresses will overtake host computers.
6. Video requirements especially around Ultra High Definition video signals will drive future IP network design and architecture, including use of SDN and NFV based services.
7. Broadband wireless will be common – locality is now important for presence and advertising – not routing.
8. Access speeds will no longer be bottlenecks and we will have access routers or switches at 10Gbps, and data will be symmetrical down and up link. New services will start generating billions for service providers worldwide.
9. Privacy becomes consumers’ biggest concern as technology gets closer to realizing services (think of the movie Minority Report).
10. Next generation speech recognition and natural language understanding will redefine the human machine interface.
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tech-perspectives-next-15-years-why-matter-urgently-eslambolchi  

Thoughts?

Power of Communication(s): Digitization

"Imagine humans and machines communicating with the same natural language that has connected individuals and societies for centuries. By 2020, the boundaries between how we observe and interact with the physical and virtual world will fade." Dr. Mahesh Saptharishi (Forbes, 13 October 2014)

Communication in Print: The power of reading and writing well

In 1983, I lived in Dallas. My ex was a successful young graphic designer working for Robert A. Wilson and Associates and I was teaching Freshman Composition at Southern Methodist University. We were also new parents of a little girl (who will marry in the Texas Hill Country this spring). During the 80s, it was not unusual for companies to execute fairly elaborate advertising campaigns. Paper and printing companies, for example, often launched sophisticated campaigns in collaboration with major, and minor, advertising agencies as a means to show off paper samples as well as the results of print graphics on the paper. Between 1983 and 1986, International Paper Company ran an extremely successful PRINT campaign with the slogal "We believe in the power of the printed word." Remember, this is just 10 years after the first very primitive home computers (1972) and still 10 years before home Internet connections (1992).

Billings S. Fuess, creative director at Ogilvy and Mather in the 80s (and who died in 2011), devised the campaign to appeal to college students and young professionals. Co-branding (before it was popularized), they worked with well-known, respected public figures to answer questions their audiences were asking. The "answers" were published on at least 15 single, 2-sided pages and authored by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut, Bill Cosby, James Michener, Malcolm Forbes and Walter Cronkite. As a young lecturer, I used the ads in class. Many students knew about the campaign too; over 27 million reprints were ordered from International Paper Corporation!

In 1985, the advertising "articles" had become so popular that 13 of them were turned into a best-selling book selling for $5.95! Below is a link to a New York Times article describing the phenomenon in 1985. Today, some 30 years later, the book How to Use the Power of the Printed Word (out-of-print) can be found online at prices ranging from 8 to 300+ dollars!

ADVERTISING; Print Ads Becoming A Book
By Philip H. Dougherty
Published: November 1, 1985

An informational marketing blogger named Lawrence Bernstein has posted a pdf copy of his copies of the ad campaign. He elicited some interesting comments from the posting too.

Teamwork: a hated concept in business school

Students are often right to dislike teamwork. Typically, a group of 4 or more on a team will include a braggart and a laggard. Combine these two with a quiet follower and a passive aggressive scribbler and you've the recipe for disaster. Many factors enter into the development of a successful team. Seldom can one take a randomly created classroom of 25 or more students and find/create 4-5 successful teams. One, maybe. Moreover, few students, given their experiences with classroom teaming, want to devote the time necessary to even try to grow a successful team and risk failing--either the project or the course. Teaming exercises, however, even within the context of "teaming" for the purpose of completing projects, can lead to learning and to success. My own preference is to encourage partnering and teams of three. Read Bloomberg's Cory Wineberg's explanation for why American students are less interested in teaming than individuals from other nations.

Photo Source: Gamecrafter from http://www.robbinssports.com

Too obvious to be important?

Business Communication courses tend to be as popular as the plague. Despite the shared understanding and general agreement among individuals, particularly business professionals, that communication is THE key to success in any organization, the subject remains suspect among university students. One critically important approach to any qualitatively-informed course that reflects the analysis of human behavior (philosophy, languages, art, dance, history, religion, design, communication), is to remember that the outcomes of these behaviors within specific contexts lead to measurable impacts in society. Moreover, reading and comprehension of these disciplines, while seemingly "simple", require deeper investigations, comparisons, perspectives, and "imbedding" in the person absorbing the concepts than what most students realize.